Oooh, I’m so excited! Come on, Ulster! They are playing in orange, aren’t they? Or are they the ones in white and red? I can never remember. Oh, right, white.
Grand, they’re starting. Why do they kick the ball to the other team instead of hanging on to it? That’s silly. Now look, there’s going to be a scrum. I know what a scrum is. It’s a bit like a cuddle, but then they all stick their noses in each other’s arses and the wee fella chucks the ball in. Then the whistle blows and they do it all over again ten times.
Fantastic, Ulster have got the ball! Oh look, he’s kicked it off the field, the eejit. What do you mean, in the opposition’s 22? Why is everyone standing up for the Ulstermen? Oh, so that’s good then.
Some of those fellas trundling up don’t look very fit at all. They’re a bit fat, like. They should go on a diet: they’re supposed to be able to run around for ninety minutes. Oh, eighty minutes? Close enough. If they could run for ninety, they could run for eighty easily.
Why have the other side got the ball to throw in? We had it last. I think the referee has got this wrong. Look at that: the man threw it to his own team and now they’ve got the ball. Now they’re all over the floor and it’s hard to tell what’s going on.
Wa-hey, that Ulsterman’s got the ball! Whoops, he’s dropped it. Ach well, never mind, it is pissing it down and it’s probably a bit slippy. What do you mean, the others get a scrum? He didn’t mean to drop it. That’s just not fair.
Scrums are boring.
Hooray, a penalty!
Didn’t he kick it beautifully? I bet it’s because his mum raised him on soda farls. Oh, South African, is he? Well, never mind, I’m sure his mother loves him anyway.
HALF-TIME
Boys-oh-boy but that’s a fine figure of a man. Have you any idea if he’s single? I have three daughters. And no grandchildren. Except for two dogs. And they’re both spayed.
SISTER’S INTERJECTION
– Is that Andrew Trimble?
– Yep; how did you know?
– We used to catch the same bus to school.
– Was he nice?
– Yeah, decent bloke.
– He’s retired now; that’s why he’s doing commentary.
– Oh Christ, I feel old.
RETURN TO THE MOTHERSHIP
Have you got his phone number?
SECOND HALF
Oh, d’ye see that fella there? That’s Stuart McCloskey. He goes to my hairdresser. He has lovely hair, so he does. He doesn’t half darken the doorway when he walks into the shop though.
Would you look at that nonsense! All the other fellas are piling on top. That’s bullying. Why doesn’t the referee stop it?
Ach for fuck’s sake the referee is awarding a penalty to the other side! This is a travesty. What do you mean, failed to release the ball? It was his bloody ball and I don’t see why he should give it to them. That’s ridiculous.
Well, this is more like it. Brave boys running down the pitch and putting the ball down over the line.
What’s a TMO? Turd Match Official? Why shouldn’t you be able to throw the ball in any direction you like if you’ve got it?
See that. I was right. Ulster vindicated. I don’t know why there was any dispute.
Well, there you are now, Martin.* Match won despite the other’s side’s cheating and the referee being biased.
*I have no idea where this phrase comes from, but it might be this.
Note: as you may be able to tell, this was mostly originally written a couple of years ago. OvallyBalls prize* to the first person who spots the internal inconsistency.
*This may not be an actual prize.
On the telly this week
Friday 22nd November
| Ulster 28 – 13 Clermont | 19:45 | BT Sport 2 |
Saturday 23rd November
| Saracens 44 – 3 Ospreys | 13:00 | Channel 4 / BT Sport 2 |
| Treviso 32 – 35 Saints | 13:00 | BT Sport 3 |
| Toulouse 32 – 17 Connacht | 13:00 | BT Sport Extra |
| Exeter 34 – 18 Glasgow | 15:00 | BT Sport 2 |
| England 60 – 3 Italy (women) | 15:00 | YouTube (!) |
| Lyon 6 – 13 Leinster | 15:15 | BT Sport 3 |
| Munster 21 – 21 Racing | 17:30 | BT Sport 3 |
| Quins 15 – 9 Bath | 17:30 | BT Sport 2 |
| Cardiff v Leicester | 20:00 | S4C / BT Sport 2 |
Sunday 24th November
| Sale v La Rochelle | 13:00 | BT Sport 2 |
| Montpellier v Gloucester | 15:15 | BT Sport 2 |
Ovally Balls 
Flair, I think you can like both, even if they can’t be compared, if you get my drift.
I like silly stuff like the Euro trash Ketchup Song, but I’m not going to compare it with Coltrane or Beethoven, that’s like taking the entirety of the work involved in Larousse Gastronomique, all of the years of perfecting every dish and comparing it with a portion of frittes.
Sometimes you just want frittes.
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Oh I agree. I like frites (harder to make good ones than it seems) and I like more elaborate dishes. What I don’t understand are people who claim to like food but never go beyond frites.
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Fair point, Flair.
(the trick I’ve found is to wash the starch out of them and then dry them properly before frying)
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Excuse my French, btw, Flair, I haven’t lived in France for almost 25 years now, and I feel ashamed that I let it go. I’m not so bad when I listen, I can understand a lot more than I can write, read or speak.
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J’adore les frites
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Ticht – she clearly doesn’t understand, believe or know what they stand for. Or agree with what they say. She isn’t alone in this.
Somewhere the message has been lost. Some blame has to go to Labour in recent times. As far back as Tony Blair imo.
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Ticht, an Australian friend of mine makes the best frites I ever had ( oh the shame!).
He blanches them first, then fries them twice, sometimes thrice in quick successions. Makes them as fluffy as snow flakes, crisp and “almost”not fat. The type of potato is of utmost importance.
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Tomp – ah OK. So if he’s impeached but isn’t proven to have done anything (except on live TV) then he stays.
I don’t know too much about the American political process outside the election tbh.
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“Somewhere the message has been lost. Some blame has to go to Labour in recent times. As far back as Tony Blair imo.”
I’m just curious as to how the fault lies with Labour?
I used to shout at the radio, demanding why Labour weren’t being allowed to put forward their policies, they were always put on the back foot by the interviewers, and that is kind of okay when you are in government, you should be held to account, but I feel that level of one sidedness has not changed since 2010, and it should have changed.
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Ticht, I’m not worried about your French. Just spend a few weeks there and it will all come back.
OT, I am about to go to bed but you just made me hungry. Although I prefer my frites with nothing but salt.
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Flair, I’ve tried all sorts of ways and the double or triple frying hasn’t been necessary in my experience, but getting the surface really dry of all moisture before frying is.
Also, I agree the potato is of utmost importance, Red Roosters work well here.
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Just tried some Comte fromage on the recommendation of a few of you on here a while ago. Delicieux!
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Ticht – I’ve heard Labour MPs on the radio a few times too. Usually they are on the back foot because they are quite frankly bad at communicating.
I’ve seen them say ‘hell yeah’ on the TV and I’ve seen the last Labour PM take this country into a bullshit war based on a lie and invoke Dog speaking to him afterwards. Posters with the word ‘Bliar’ used to be everywhere. It may have happened with a tory government, but it was unfortunately Labour.
Today was a disaster. Why hasn’t corbyn done everything he can to assure the Jewish community that he’s on top of the antisemitism problem that Labour seems to have? He should be better at managing perception amongst a traditionally core group of his supporters. Ffs.
It’s not a surprise that regular folk don’t want or trust that. It’s why I’m depressed about the state of politics right now. I hate the fact that the tories are in charge, I hate that we are leaving the EU and I hate the fact that the opposition has been so weak. The only way we can change things is acknowledge why that’s the case. It’s not just the press being biased against him.
In my opinion anyway.
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Craigs, there is a parliamentary report which states that there are individuals in the Labour party who have shown anti-Semitic tendencies, when investigated these have been shown to be an ignorant use of the word “Jews”.
The same report stated that Labour was no more likely to have anti-Semites as members than any other party
look at paragraph 120 here
Despite significant press and public attention on the Labour Party, and a number of revelations regarding inappropriate social media content, there exists no reliable, empirical evidence to support the notion that there is a higher prevalence of antisemitic attitudes within the Labour Party than any other political party. We are unaware whether efforts to identify antisemitic social media content within the Labour Party were applied equally to members and activists from other political parties, and we are not aware of any polls exploring antisemitic attitudes among political party members, either within or outside the Labour Party. The current impression of a heightened prevalence of antisemitism within in the Labour Party is clearly a serious problem, but we would wish to emphasise that this is also a challenge for other parties.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmhaff/136/13609.htm
If the above is true, why are Labour being constantly attacked as being anti-Semitic?
Baroness Wari’s claims of Islamophobia in the Tory party don’t get anywhere near the same amount of coverage, not in the same ballpark.
Why is this?
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Also Craigs, it is a fact that the secret services undermined the Labour government and people in the 1970s, I can find the relevant articles to show you if you want. Just like the McCrone report, people have been called all sorts of conspiracy theorists for suggesting there was interference on this scale, but it has been proven by the parliamentary documents, just like union activists were blacklisted, again the tinfoil hat label was put on them but actor Ricky Tomlinson was one and he has proof of it.
Just like the doctoring of footage of the miners we talked about the other day
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Never mind claims of Islamophobia, just set it against the government’s real policies. Theresa May and anyone prepared to be associated with her government i.e. the whole fucking lot of them could be denounced as racists and xenophobes for what they have actually done rather than comments a few others have made on social media.
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None of which has anything to do with the laughable notion that the Conservatives are the people to help with the problems that Tory from Sheerness listed. Or with the fact that they’ve been in power for the last nine years exacerbating those same problems as known and to some extent intentional consequences of their policies.
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Which of course is the point of the antisemitism thing.
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“Which of course is the point of the antisemitism thing.”
?
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Ticht, the issue with anti-Semitism and Labour isn’t the prevalence, it is that it appears to be institutionalised – ie, Jewish people within the party are systemically discriminated against when they raise a complaint about racism directed towards them. These complaints have been routinely ignored, put on ice, downgraded. Individuals who have made anti-Semitic statements have been promoted and tolerated within the party. Jewish activists have suffered serious mental health consequences as a result – some have considered suicide. 15,000 pages of documentary evidence have been sent to the EHRC, which has decided to conduct an investigation. The evidentiary bar for that course of action is incredibly high. The only political party to have previously been investigated by the EHRC on these grounds are the BNP.
When the Met Police was described as institutionally racist in the wake of the Lawrence murder, the claim wasn’t that all Met coppers were racist. Nor was it that even a significant minority where racist. The claim was that black people were subject to institutionalised discrimination as a result of the policies and procedures of the Met. The same charge is levelled at the Labour Party with regard to Jews, so your point about raw numbers isn’t relevant.
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I’d really recommend watching the Panorama documentary on this. Some of testimony from Jewish Labour activists, who have committed their lives to the party, is heartbreaking.
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Chek, the point the parliamentary document makes is that Labour are no different on this than any other party, yet only one has been investigated. See also my earlier comments about the secret services undermining Labour.
If you have a Facebook account go on to the chief rabbi’s page and scroll down to July, have a look at what he posted about Boris Johnson being made leader of the Tories and hence PM.
Then ask why he comes out yesterday with what he did.
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Ticht – I think that we are talking past each other to an extent. I don’t disagree with you on any single point.
If Labour lose as they are projected to, what should they do? Should Corbyn stay? Should they reinvent themselves like Tony Blair’s Labour did? Should they promise to cut taxes on booze, fags and petrol just to close the gap? Or should they carry on as before?
If I’m honest I’m a little bit stumped.
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*steps around the politics*
Te’o to the sunwolves
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Craigs, I don’t think any Labour leader could lose two elections and stay on, or rather imo he should go in that circumstance, he is never going to be listened to on policy alone.
Yesterday he was asked about tax on wages lower than £80k, he tried to explain the concept of net winners in terms of other benefits, but the headlines on BBC radio news were all about earners below £80K would pay an extra two hundred and fifty quid per year, some news reports related that that figure would split between two people in a household, some didn’t
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Blimey, Gary Rhodes dead at 59.
I liked his shows, he explained what was happening during cooking in an interesting way
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*fundamentalist choob update*
*Rugby player Israel Folau has upped his demands for compensation from Rugby Australia to A$14m (£7.4m; $9.5m), following his high-profile sacking.*
‘In raising his compensation claim, Folau asserted that he could have become captain of the national side.
…
He argued the Wallabies would have achieved a “superior performance” at the Rugby World Cup in September if he had been in the side.’
I so hope he loses.
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“Chek, the point the parliamentary document makes is that Labour are no different on this than any other party, yet only one has been investigated. See also my earlier comments about the secret services undermining Labour.”
No, sorry – only Labour has passed the extremely high evidentiary bar to be investigated by the EHRC for *institutional* anti-Semitism. Again, this isn’t about raw numbers, it’s about procedures and policies.
“If you have a Facebook account go on to the chief rabbi’s page and scroll down to July, have a look at what he posted about Boris Johnson being made leader of the Tories and hence PM.
Then ask why he comes out yesterday with what he did.”
Every faith leader sends a message like this when a new PM takes power. To single out the leader of the Jewish community in this way is disgusting. You’re suggesting he’s making up an accusation of racism to help the Tories. You’re denying him, and the Jewish community, the right to define racism against them, and the right to speak out when they see it. You’re accusing them of ulterior motives. You’re denying their testimony. Shame on you.
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59? that’s young
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This’ll go well.
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Uppa Dragons
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Ticht is a pretty powerful bloke if he can stop the Chief Rabbi and all Jewish people doing all that. Am surprised he has time to do it with all those guitars he has to repair in Brighton, as well as driving his wife to the station. Excellent multitasking, Ticht.
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never been to newport. Looks like I’ll have to take the family on the holiday there.
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Yos – amazing that Westminster is the worst place to live even though the average house price is ridiculous.
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Chimpie – I have. Lovely pubs near the station.
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Aberdeen top of that list. Everyone move to Aberdeen!
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Soz for trying to ruin the party. We’ll be nicer next time.
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@craigs
Ringland>Westminster
Newport>London
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“Again, this isn’t about raw numbers, it’s about procedures and policies. ”
The procedures which elected a Jewish leader of the Labour party just a few years ago.
As for the rest of that hyperbolic post, if someone makes a political statement, especially someone in a position of great influence, their motivations must be subject to analysis, no one can be above this, not unless you want a procession as opposed to an election.
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Yos – seems fair. However Ashford in Kent is #1 in a just world.
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an odd little tale.
‘AYRSHIRE BULLS and Scotland prop Gordie Reid turned superhero on Sunday morning, but got no thanks for his bravery because the man he rescued from a house fire ‘legged it like Usain Bolt’.’
https://www.theoffsideline.com/gordie-reid-house-fire/
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Chimpie, Glasgow should get him back playing for them, there is a big drop off from Kebble to the next guys
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Jonathan Miller gone now too, at least he made it to 85.
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Bloody hell.
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Terrific signing Refit, though it’s bound to raise a few eyebrows post-Sarries and all.
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‘salary cap’
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Marquee players don’t count under the cap, do they?
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Fantastic beard that man has.
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Things going well at the Os then.
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“Marquee players don’t count under the cap, do they?”
They don’t but I think you’re only allowed two, and Piutau and Luatua are the Bears’ marquee guys, aren’t they?
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